


Eulogy

by telm_393



Series: In Memoriam [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 10:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newton's gone. Hermann is adrift.</p><p>(Sequel to "No Heartbeat".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eulogy

Hermann doesn’t own any suits.

He doesn’t even own any black clothing.

All of it is in understated shades and plaid and argyle or simply solid blues and browns, the occasional brick red.

He remembers that when he was younger Karla told him he looked ridiculous in black; because it was “slimming”, and thus made him look “practically nonexistent”.

So he stopped wearing black, the only time that he ever listened to his sister’s alleged fashion advice.

Hermann does have a few ties, but none of them are his.

Hermann is able to find, digging deep into his closet, a hideous, skinny bright red tie that he stole and hid from Newton years ago because it was truly offensive to the eyes.

Mako finds him sitting on his bed, staring down at the thing with empty eyes, twisting it around his hands, and gently takes it from him.

“There are so many of his clothes in my closet,” Hermann says very quietly. “I hadn’t realized.”

Mako leans her head on his shoulder and takes his hand.

Hermann closes his eyes and squeezes her hand too hard, but she doesn’t pull away, just squeezes back until Hermann is certain they’re going to give each other bruises.

The funeral is tomorrow.

Newton’s family decided to have the funeral in Hong Kong because it’s what Newton would have wanted, and they also wanted to wait until Hermann got out of medical.

Hermann appreciates it, in a numb, faraway manner, though he still finds it confusing.

Hermann has never met Newton’s family.

“I don’t have anything to wear to the funeral,” he informs Mako after at least half an hour of sitting together during which Mako carefully wipes away a few tears that slip from her eyes and Hermann pretends not to notice out of politeness.

“It’s alright. Tendo is finding you a suit.”

“Oh,” Hermann says quietly.

He feels empty. It’s like part of his brain has gone cold and twisted.

Hermann was in medical for 4 days, 1 hour, and 30 minutes.

Newton has been dead for 4 days, 8 hours, and 38 minutes.

It feels wrong.

“The funeral is tomorrow,” Raleigh told him gently when he and Mako dropped by at 0800 hours when Hermann was leaving medical, because Mako’s eyes were shining and she did not seem to want to open her mouth lest she cry.

Hermann knows that facial expression, has studied that facial expression, and hasn’t seen it on Mako since she was sixteen years old.

Hermann had nodded.

And now.

Now he is sitting on his bed in his quarters with Mako Mori, who is not a child anymore, and the funeral is still tomorrow.

Hermann clenches his free hand and opens his eyes as though he is waking up.

But he is quite awake.

He has already missed the funerals of the Wei Tang triplets, the Kaidanovskys, Stacker Pentecost, and Chuck Hansen.

There are so many ghosts of those he knew walking through the halls of the Shatterdome, none of whom had any family that wasn’t already residing there.

Mako says that they were quick, private, respectful funerals. “They were…nice,” she says, struggling to find a word in any language that can accurately describe them and coming up short.

Hermann stares into his closet from his seat on the bed. He didn’t realize that he’d made such a mess, rummaging in it, and now there’s lumps of his clothing on the floor, occasionally mixed with dress shirts of many colors and sleep clothes that consisted of sweatpants and silly t-shirts.

“We should go eat,” Mako suggests.

“I already ate,” Hermann says numbly. He did. He ate in the morning, some kind of breakfast, because if he didn’t they wouldn’t let him out of medical.

“That doesn’t count,” Mako says. It sounds like the kind of thing that Newton would say, and Hermann’s breath catches in his chest.

Is this how it’s going to be? Is Newton going to be imprinted in everything Hermann hears and sees and does from now on?

Hermann gets up with a tired sigh and follows Mako to the cafeteria.

Hermann ends up with a plate full of food he does not care for, and he eats it all carefully as Mako eats her own food in similar silence.

Raleigh joins them, after a few minutes, and Hermann doesn’t even look up at him, even when he feels Raleigh’s large, warm presence by his side.

He is still very tired, no matter how much he slept. He thinks maybe he’ll be tired for the rest of his life.

+

Newton was cremated.

Hermann wakes up screaming from some nightmare in which Newton isn’t really dead until they burn him to ashes.

He shivers, waiting until the door opens, until somebody checks up on him. He knows somebody will because they all have rooms near each other now, and nobody seems to want to leave him alone.

He sits up in his bed and pulls his good leg to his chest, rests his chin on it. “Don’t think about it,” he whispers to himself. “Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.”

There was so much blood. He should have told Newton to go to medical, but they just wanted to sleep, all they wanted to do was sleep, and now Newton’s never going to wake up.

“How’s it going?” Tendo asks from where he may have been watching the proceedings for minutes, for all Hermann knows.

“How do you think?” Hermann asks, acid in his voice.

“I know,” Tendo says. “I know.”

Hermann’s not sure what he knows, but he doesn’t really care. Tendo must understand some of this. Tendo was Newton’s friend too.  
“It’s my fault,” Hermann says, and his voice sounds hollow to his ears. It’s like all of his emotions have been scooped out of him, and all that is left is bone-chilling certainty.

“No, it’s not,” Tendo says, and he sounds certain too.

It’s frustrating.

“Fool,” Hermann spits, hoping Tendo will go away.

He doesn’t. “The doctors said you couldn’t have changed anything if you’d gone to medical earlier.”

Somehow, that just makes it worse.

Hermann doesn’t cry, because he doesn’t usually cry.

The past few days have been an anomaly.

+

The funeral is too quiet, too somber, and too full of people Hermann knows Newton would not want there. Scientists they knew who ran off to the coastal wall once things got too hard. (“They bailed on us,” Newton said, voice full of bewildered hurt. “I can’t believe it. How could they think…how could they just give up?”)

Hermann doesn’t say anything because Mako is with him, looking more than a little heartbroken, and he doesn’t want to upset her, and he doesn’t want his voice to break, and he doesn’t want—he doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that he cared when they left, that Newton cared when they left.

And then his father shows up and Hermann can’t keep himself under control.

“How dare you,” he hisses, walking up to the man and bringing himself up to his full height. Lars Gottlieb is still a head taller, but Hermann doesn’t care. “How dare you come here when you were no friend of his, when you were nothing but a nuisance, a coward that he disdained? You have no place here, none of these scientists, these cowards who gave up, who decided this world was a lost cause have a place here.”

“Hermann,” Lars says, but there is a shaking in his voice that Hermann takes vicious pride in. “Control yourself.”

“I will not. Leave. Leave, you don’t belong here!”

Hermann is shaking violently, now, and he feels a gentle hand on his shoulder that he immediately shrugs off.

“I think your son is right,” somebody says in a soft voice, and Hermann turns to look at a man he’s only ever seen in photographs and video chats. “Newt wouldn’t’ve wanted you here,” Jacob Geiszler says.

Lars presses his lips together and then opens his mouth and closes it again, turns on his heel and leaves, not before looking back, something Hermann can’t quite place shining in his eyes. But in the end he leaves silently, and Hermann is still shaking.

+

Jacob Geiszler asks: “Are you alright?”

“I should ask you that question,” Hermann says in a rough voice.

“I think we both know the answer.”

They do.

Nothing will be alright again, not ever, not quite.

+

When Mako speaks, she does so in the practiced way of one who has spoken at too many funerals, but it’s with passion and with love. She talks about an evening spent running around in the rain with Newton when she was just a child. She says that at that moment with him, she felt truly free. Hermann remembers that night, remembers watching from the window, remembers laughing.

When Jacob Geiszler speaks, he talks of Newton growing up, of watching Godzilla what seemed like a million times, of trying to keep up with a child as brilliant as Newton was, of watching his son grow up into the kind of man who would sacrifice his life for the world.

When Tendo Choi speaks, he is like Mako in that he has practice giving a eulogy. He tells short stories from the time that he's known Newton, and makes most people in the room laugh or even smile, remembering what an exuberant person Newton was, what an irrepressible spirit. Hermann doesn't smile, doesn't laugh. t makes him feel emptier, the eulogy, because he knows nobody in his life is ever going to fit into it the same way Newton did.

When Hercules Hansen speaks, he speaks of sacrifice, calls Newton a hero. It doesn’t ring false to Hermann, not really, but he watches Hansen and in that moment wishes almost desperately that Pentecost was still alive.

+  
Hermann doesn’t give a eulogy.

What would he say?

_I miss you like one might miss a part of their very soul. I miss you so much I ache constantly in a way that’s entirely different from my usual aches and pains, in a way that I’m not sure I want to get used to. I don’t know if you ever understood the way you commanded a room, but you still do, or rather, your absence does, and I feel it keenly. It’s everywhere._

_Your memory is everywhere, and I promise that I will not forget. I don’t know how I could. I don’t know how anybody could forget you._

_I promise that you will live forever in all the ways you wanted to. I'll take care of it._

It all seems too personal, all seems like it should be just for Newton.

Like it should be just for the two of them.

It was the two of them for so long.

+

The night after the funeral, Hermann lies awake for hours before finally succumbing to exhaustion.

He’s found that sleeping alone is now very difficult.

He supposes he’ll get used to it.

He’ll have to.

+

(Two years later, it's near the end of class. Hermann has been talking about the drift and his experiences with it. He has mentioned Newton at least five times, and each time it makes something flutter in the back of his head, some memory of laughter, of excited chattering.

A student raises her hand, and Hermann calls on her knowing what the question will be. For the first time in a long time, he is willing to answer it.

"What was he like?" she asks bluntly before looking embarrassed, even slightly panicked. He knows exactly who she's talking about, but she clarifies anyway. "Dr. Geiszler, I mean."

Hermann stays silent and somber for a long time, long enough that he knows he must be making his students uncomfortable, but he can't bring himself to care. "He was..." he finally says. "Enthusiastic. He had a way of bringing attention to himself that was truly exceptional, if not always welcome. Often, I considered him a nuisance, and he considered me a stuffy old man, but he was my closest friend, and I was his." He falls silent again. "Yes, he was a dear friend," he finally says, half to himself.

There's so much more to say, but it's all Hermann can bring himself to tell.)


End file.
